Windows 11's built-in security program, Microsoft Defender Antivirus, is a solid pick for keeping you safe. Best of all, it's readily installed and running the moment you boot up the OS for the first time. Which is why, if you've been getting spammed by notifications claiming that "Microsoft Defender Antivirus is turned off" when everything seems okay, it's only natural to be a little bit worried.

As someone who's used the Galaxy Z Flip 5 for the last three years, I love how Samsung packs One UI with features you don't always get on other Android phones. But having more features doesn't automatically make a phone better, especially when some of them get in the way or solve one problem only to create another.

Chess.com has done one thing, and one thing very well, for almost 20 years, but now it's going beyond its domain name. The biggest name in online chess quietly launched its first companion site in beta back in May: Gambit, a free online poker website where players can learn the game without risking any real money. Now Gambit's ready to really get the ball rolling with its first livestreamed event and collaborations with content creators, and Chess.com is planning to branch out into even more games from here.Chess.com's chief growth officer, Albert Cheng, told The Verge the company chose poker for its first companion site because, like ches …Read the full story at The Verge.

I have always liked how polished Apple CarPlay feels, but its interface can look awkward on certain infotainment screens. Depending on the display's size and shape, icons can feel oversized, cramped, or out of proportion with the rest of the dashboard.

Humanoid robot competes in the optional boxing routine event during the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at National Speed Skating Oval on August 26, 2026 in Beijing, China. | Image: Getty Images This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on falling robots and the US-China AI race, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes on Sunday at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here. How it startedI've admitted my fondness for robot fail videos on Stepback before, and let me tell you the World Humanoid Robot Games did not disappoint. The five-day event, which wrapped this week in Beijing, brought high drama, and brought it well. One robot, made by smartphone maker Honor, lost a leg mid-sprint, while others tripped in a flurry of sparks. Another finis …Read the full story at The Verge.

Self-hosting services is an easy pitch to anyone who likes to tinker, and getting into it as a hobby has never been easier. Swapping a few recurring bills for a bit of effort spread across time sounds like a good trade, and it is, but it's not all positive. I've been running an assortment of self-hosted FOSS tools for over a year, and these are the day-to-day and setup annoyances that nobody warned me about.

When I first picked up the 16-inch Lenovo Pro 9i Aura Edition, my initial reaction was that it was a very beefy, but solid-feeling laptop.

I love my Proxmox nodes, and they're indispensable parts of my home lab. But each of them writes a journal I have never read and am unlikely to read anytime soon. It's just too much data. Two weeks' worth is thousands of lines of systemd, cron sessions, or timers, with a handful of useful pieces of information buried under the weight of noise. So, I "trained" Claude Code on it, and like when Claude helped clean up my Windows install, now I can make sense of the clutter.

From the AI chatbots that have practically become household names to tools that make you completely forget about PowerPoint and Canva to terminal-based coding agents, I've been testing AI tools and pitting them against each other for what feels like forever now. At this point, bouncing between different ones has become a normal part of my workflow.

Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 142, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, how is it almost September already, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.) This week, I've been remembering Dolly Parton, Tim Curry, and Peter Cullen, absorbing everything in Rockstar's big GTA VI preview, wondering if Apple will announce a foldable iPhone at its September event, getting sucked into Summoning Salt's latest speedrunning documentary about competitive Tetris, listening to Weird Al's new Tiny Desk concert ("The Saga Begins!"), and getting a Reuben from my favorite lo …Read the full story at The Verge.

Usually, when picking an operating system, you have a choice: you can either install something that's open-source, or you can use Windows apps natively. But what if you wanted both? Well, that's what ReactOS is aiming to do.

Ten years ago, if someone said people would still be buying AM4 CPUs in 2026, they'd be laughed at. After all, AMD originally planned to support AM4 only through 2020, but the platform surpassed everybody's expectations, probably even AMD's. Despite AM5's launch in 2022, AMD kept releasing new AM4 CPUs, and now, a decade later, the company has brought one of AM4's most beloved CPUs back to market.